Thank you so much for having me here today.
You don't know how much of a joy it is to bring the things that I love
to the people that God cares and loves for.
This is a real joy for me.
So we are going to look at this theme of steadfast in humility.
And I think humility is a really good word that captures Gladys Alwood.
And I think she's going to help us wrestle with that pull
that I think we can all feel about wanting to leave a legacy in this world.
We want to be remembered.
We want people to know our names both now and after we're gone.
We want to be people worthy of honour and known to be worthy of honour.
So I wonder as we start today what kind of legacy you want to leave.
I have to think about this for my own life.
How do I want to be remembered?
Do I want to be remembered?
What are the things that I want to be known for after I'm gone?
And what's remarkable about Gladys Alwood is she's not a person
that strives for this.
And that's going to come out in her story.
She wasn't someone who wanted to be recognised in the circles that she moved in,
which I find can be tempting for us,
that temptation to be recognised in our communities,
in our jobs, in our social circles.
Her world's no different.
It's not a problem that just belongs to our generation.
It's a perennial universal problem.
But I think for her it's her prayerful reliance on the Lord
that allows her to be free of that need.
It just doesn't have a hold on her.
She's just not interested in it.
And so I'm going to tell you her story, her remarkable story.
I'm going to tell you just some of it,
but it's full of fascinating twists and turns.
But it is the story of a person making decision after decision,
prayerfully making decision after decision,
to pursue God's will.
She's a woman of great spiritual momentum.
She's very unimpressive outwardly.
She's a tiny little thing.
But she has gravitas.
She's got huge spiritual momentum.
She didn't know where God would take her in this world,
but she made prayerful choice after choice
to live for him and not for herself.
So Gladys was born into a Christian family in London
right at the beginning of the 20th century, so 1902.
Her dad was a warden at the local church.
Her mum raised the siblings in her home,
you know, according to Christian values.
But they weren't really sticking for Gladys.
She wasn't interested.
It was in her teenage years
that things really switch on for her spiritually.
Soon after that, what we might call a conversion experience,
for her it was the idea of millions of people in China
dying without access to the gospel.
That's what really gripped her heart.
Now, what she did about that
is she tried to convince everyone else to go instead.
You need to go.
No, you need to go.
And one day her brother got so frustrated with her
in their kitchen at home
that he just kind of had an outburst
and said, Gladys, stop bugging us.
Why don't you go?
And then he stormed out.
So they got her thinking.
I don't think she'd even thought that was a possibility.
So she was 27 when she was accepted for missionary training
with China Inland Mission.
I don't know if you've heard of that organisation.
It was an organisation that Hudson Taylor had set up
about 70 years before this.
And he set it up because lots of the missionaries
were staying on the eastern coast of China,
but they weren't heading inland.
So there was a vast interior that did not have access to the gospel.
And so he sets up the aptly termed China Inland Mission.
So that's who she goes and approaches for missionary training.
She is accepted.
But soon the wheels fall off.
She had been educated up to a point of...
at 14 years of age and then had stopped.
She'd gone out and worked in a shop instead.
And she wasn't demonstrating a proficiency in learning language.
And so China Inland Mission deemed her unacceptable
for missionary service
because of her language acquisition skills were lacking.
So she wasn't allowed to continue.
She was heartbroken.
She was devastated.
Devastated.
China Inland Mission said when they brought her in
for kind of the exit interview, as we might call it,
she did say to them that she had really learnt to pray in this time.
She may not have learnt language,
but she had learnt to pray at this time.
I love what Tim Keller says on prayer.
He says,
God will either give us what we ask
or give us what we would have asked for
if we knew everything he knew.
So she keeps praying.
She ends up in the home as a housekeeper
of a retired China Inland Mission couple.
So they've returned from the field
and she goes into their house
to help them in their later years.
And as she watches them,
she sees their prayerful reliance on the Lord.
And she continues hearing stories about China,
about the work of the gospel there.
And she eventually finds out
about a 73-year-old Scottish widow
looking for someone to join her
in ministry in northern China.
So she asks if she could come.
This Scottish widow,
Jeannie Lawson is her name.
She's quite very,
she's very dow,
she's very serious.
And she says,
basically,
if you can find your way to me,
you're welcome.
This woman had been looking for someone young
to come and take over her work.
She's widowed,
she's elderly,
she wants someone to come
and take over the work.
And so that's what Gladys is now trying to do.
So she saves up for a train ticket.
I don't know if you've gone on like webjet.com
and looked up flights.
What are the cheapest flights?
The ones that are like,
you know,
five stops around the world
before you want to get to your destination.
For her,
the cheapest train ticket
that she could get to China
would take her through Europe,
Russia,
Siberia,
and into northern China.
So she put it on lay-by.
She would go and make payments
at the train station
to pay off this ticket.
She eventually got the money,
pay for the ticket.
The train teller said,
you really shouldn't be going, sweetheart.
You really shouldn't be going.
Because there was war on at the time
between China and Japan
and on one of China's allies was Russia.
But she sets off.
1932,
30 years of age,
she sets off.
She considered later the cost
that this would have been
for her family.
Because really,
if you're getting a train to China
through Europe, Russia, Siberia,
it's not easy to get your baby girl back, is it?
Right at the beginning of her journey,
she meets the Dutch couple.
So she's on the train.
She meets a Dutch couple
coming back from attending
the Keswick Convention.
in England.
So the Keswick Convention's like
going to Katoomba
or going to...
It's one of those big things.
And so they're getting the train
back home to Holland,
to the Netherlands,
and they have a conversation.
They talk with Gladys.
They learn that she's off to China
with the gospel.
And the woman in the couple
promises that at 9 o'clock,
every night,
she's going to pray for Gladys.
9 o'clock,
every night,
she's going to pray for Gladys
for the rest of her life.
She said,
can we write one another's names
in each other's Bibles
so we can remember each other?
The man,
I don't know if he felt awkward
at this point.
I don't know his motives,
what he was doing,
if he just wanted to help.
But he gives Gladys
a one-pound British note.
Now, this woman's not going back
to a country
where she can spend this, right?
But she's got this
one-pound British note
from this guy.
It's not a whole lot of money,
but, you know,
it's something,
as they say goodbye.
So Gladys is perplexed.
What am I going to do with this?
That note is going to save her life.
So because war
between China and Japan
had broken out
the year before,
she was rerouted
through different parts
of Russia.
It gets very complex
at one point.
She has to get off the train
because it won't go any further
into, you know,
a region where there's war going on.
She has to walk back
to the last station,
which is like a two-day walk,
so she has to sleep
in the snow overnight
on her suitcase
with the wolves howling.
It's all going on for her.
She makes it back
to the previous station
and soldiers tell her
the convoluted way
that she has to go
to get to the next spot
to avoid the scenes of battle.
as she's making that journey,
Russian soldiers take her passport away.
That's a very vulnerable position,
isn't it,
to be a woman
in the middle of Russia
without a passport.
They changed the profession
on her passport
from missionary
to machinist
because they wanted her
to work on the new machines
that they had in that city.
They wanted her to stay and work.
She was trapped.
Some locals
at high cost
to their own personal safety
tried to think of a way
to help her escape.
There's a boat
leaving for Japan.
It's a Japanese boat
leaving for Japan.
Can they smuggle her onto it?
She makes it to the boat.
She's on the gangway.
Russian soldiers
literally grab her.
And what does she produce?
The one pound note
and they let go long enough
to grab it
for her to pull her arms back,
jump on the boat
and keep going.
So it saved her life.
She said that moment
was like escaping
a bird catcher's net.
I love how the Lord works
in amazing ways like that.
So she lands in Japan.
She was never supposed
to go through Japan.
She crosses into China.
She still has a further
train, bus, and two-day
meal ride
to reach the small town
in the mountains
of northern China
where she would finally
meet Mrs. Lawson.
So this is the story
of just getting there, right?
She hasn't even started ministry.
This is the story
of her getting there.
Now, Jeannie Lawson,
she lives in a very rough,
large house full of rubbish,
broken masonry everywhere.
All the rooms don't have windows
or doors.
It's very rough.
She plans to turn it
into an inn for travellers.
They're going to call it
the Inn of Eight Happinesses.
And so on Gladys' first night,
she's like,
where can I get changed?
And Jeannie Lawson says,
don't get changed.
Just sleep with your clothes on.
That way they can't get stolen.
And lucky she did
because when she woke up
in the morning,
it was to a sea of faces
in at the window
because the foreign woman
had arrived.
News had got around.
Now, why are they turning
this rough house
into a hotel and inn?
Well, in that part
of northern China,
you might be familiar with it.
It's very rough mountain terrain.
And so to have anything
travel through,
it was via mules.
It was like a mule highway.
So there was a need
for these mule riders
to find cheap,
simple overnight accommodation
and food.
Gladys had stayed
in some of them
on her trip into this place.
And so news soon
spread around the area
that, quote,
the inn of the foreign ladies
was clean,
the food is good,
and at night,
they have long stories
free of charge.
So what were these stories?
They told stories
from the Bible.
And in the end,
that's how Gladys
picked up the language,
which she says
is one of the biggest
miracles of all her time
there was picking up
the language.
She learnt it
through learning off
by heart
these Bible stories
and telling them.
Within about a year,
Jeannie Lawson had died.
And so young Gladys
is alone,
the only foreigner,
not just the only woman
foreigner,
the only foreigner
in that part of China.
one day,
a local magistrate
comes to Gladys
with a request.
Now,
it would have been
a very intimidating scene
because he came in
with armed guards,
they've got big swords
by their side,
he's a very intimidating
person
with a lot of power.
He comes to Gladys
with a request.
He says,
he now has
the personal responsibility
to ensure that foot binding,
which had been recently outlawed,
was eradicated
in his area.
And so,
you may be aware,
foot binding
is where they break
the foot
and bind it
in half
underneath
a young woman's feet.
Sorry,
yeah,
yeah.
So Gladys,
I said before,
she's tiny,
she's four feet,
ten inches tall.
She's got size three feet.
Her feet were considered giant
and the locals
would often like lift
the bottom of her skirt
to look at her,
like just marvel,
this massive feet
that she has.
And so the magistrate said
that as a woman
with big feet,
he needed her
to help inspect
women's feet
in the area
because men
weren't allowed
to do that job
and every other woman
had her feet bound.
So what's Gladys
going to do
in this moment?
She says to him,
I've come to China
to tell people
about the God
I worship.
If I take the job,
I'm going to use it
as an opportunity
to preach the gospel
to these isolated villages.
And he agrees
because I says,
I notice you Christian people
don't bind your feet.
A man's gods
are his own business.
Yes, you can go
and do that.
So she's given
government funding
and essentially security
to go into these
isolated villages
and towns
with the gospel.
And they would call out
her name
in Mandarin
was Aiwede.
That was the closest
to Aylward,
Aiwede,
and it meant virtuous one.
And they would
announce in the town
that she had arrived
and she became known
as the storyteller.
The storytellers arrived.
And so she would tell
these stories
in all these isolated villages.
And so Gladys
strikes me
as a woman
who was as wise
as a serpent
and innocent
as a dove
when it came
to opportunities
to talk about Jesus.
Yes.
but Gladys feels awfully lonely as you can imagine she had expected at this point in her life to be
married to have children she's just lonely because she doesn't have a co-worker let alone a husband
she's praying God could you please send someone to help and preferably a man not necessarily to
marry him but just you know I need a guy around to do some of the hard stuff can you just please
send someone and God doesn't answer the prayer that way instead she's walking home one day
and she this young girl lying in the arms of a woman on the side of the road
this little girl is essentially a slave and she's probably hours away from death and Gladys
offers to buy this little girl the woman in whose care this girl was saw it as an opportunity to you
know make a few coins and so she sells her to Gladys for six pence that's probably like five
Australian dollars today so not much six pence and she takes her home and cares for her and she says
she calls this girl six pence she says six pence helped fill that aching void in her and of course
six pence wasn't alone in the circumstances she found herself in so she would bring other people
to Gladys for help yeah other orphans or other vulnerable children to Gladys and so Gladys keeps
accumulating more and more children over a hundred she ends up saying like I long for a moment to myself
now she cares for them she feeds them she teaches them including bible stories she speaks the gospel to
them now by this stage her town is repeatedly a war zone so soldiers would come in they would retreat
things would be decimated they would return again to more and more rubble it would happen again and again
and again and so really her city is crumbling around her she knows she needs to get these kids out
she needs to get them to safety now there's a very powerful woman who is has a lot of funding at her
disposal and she is helping care for what she calls them warfans war orphans and so she says to Gladys
look I can help you you just need to get the kids to me in this in the safe zone now that safe zone is 350
kilometers north across the mountains in the middle of a war
and so Gladys sets off on that mountainous mule track with over a hundred kids aged between three and
sixteen and so gruelling dangerous journey they have to beg for food along the way which is obviously scarce
in a war zone other villages would be completely abandoned as they made their way across they come
to the wide expanse of the yellow river what are they going to do there's not ferries running anymore
in a in a war zone there's no boats to be seen they can they cannot cross it
i was listening to a talk that Gladys gave in Sydney in the 1960s this week not many of the people that i
get to write about and study i actually get to hear their voices so it's amazing and she talked about this
moment on the banks of that river they slept out in the open for a couple of nights trying to think
about what to do as her breaking point that was her breaking point
how could God deliver them from that
could God be trusted in that situation on the banks of the yellow river she could not see a solution
God was not coming through could he be trusted
she'd been teaching the bible stories to uh those children in her care
and one of them that she must have taught them was the story of when israel leaves egypt
leaving pharaoh behind pharaoh and his armies are chasing the israelites and of course they come to
the river that they can't cross the red sea what are they going to do what's God going to do in this
situation
and this is what a kid said about this moment he said when we got to the river we waited and waited for a boat
they came to her with this story
and so he said we prayed
for the river to be opened so that we could walk across like the children of israel did
across the red sea but
God knew we were tired of walking
and so he sent a boat and that was far better and that's what he did a ferry finally came and i love
this kid's words here because it wasn't that the parting of the sea of the yellow river was harder than
a boat God was just more kind in sending a boat because their feet were really sore from walking they
didn't have to want to walk across the river bed they got across the river they continued the trek
going so high up sometimes up the mountains the clouds obscured them
it was a long month it was an agonizing journey they finally arrived where they could get help
and Gladys's body understandably completely shut down
she went to hospital doctors fully expected her to die she had typhoid pneumonia malnutrition
exhaustion she lay there for a month completely out of it unaware of her surroundings she recovered but
it took years she can't really remember the next two years of her life
when the chinese revolution began in 1949
she was forced to leave china and she returned to england and she never went back there she would
eventually go to taiwan to head an orphanage in 1957 and she died there in 1970
the city aged 68 and on her tombstone are those words that were read at the beginning that unless
a kernel of wheat falls to the ground there won't be new life
so i've told you some of the remarkable parts of her story and in many ways
it's a memorable story a lot more happens on the way it's a wild ride but this is the part that's
more remarkable to me her story nearly was forgotten because she was content for it to be
forgotten she was a woman so bound up with christ her christ-shaped humility meant she didn't care
if she was known or remembered it had no hold on her she didn't want or need to leave a legacy
she didn't desire that her life story be honored that someone write a biography about her
so let me tell you the story of how her story came to light and how it helps us reflect on that
pull to be remembered by the world so gladys returns to england in 1949 and there's a few lines
in the newspaper that report that she's returned home from being a missionary in china for 20 years
and so a bbc journalist and writer he sees those few lines in a newspaper he's working on a project
for bbc radio so think of it like modern podcasts he's doing a series uh called the undefeated so
he's looking for stories that kind of match with that theme the undefeated and he thinks i re i reckon
there's a story here so he goes to her home in london he asked gladys have you seen any adventures
that map with the theme of the undefeated
she says no nothing noteworthy has happened to me
that that journalist
alan
recorded that conversation and he remembered it word for word because it had such an impact on him
but surely he said in 20 years in china you must have had many strange experiences
others oh yes said gladys but i'm sure people would not be interested in them nothing very exciting
happened it was at least 15 minutes more before she confessed that she had
once taken some children across the mountains
and slowly the story emerged
and the rest is history it was turned into a book that he wrote
a film which gladys hated hated she hated the attention she hated becoming a household name
and so i marvel at her story it's an incredible one but more so i marvel at the fact that she didn't
desire to be remembered she's she was not the center of her story she would have been much more
comfortable being forgotten by the world why why is that for gladys well that journalist alan burgess
helps us understand that woman that he met on that fateful day this is what he writes he goes it was
not mock modesty on the part of gladys arwood the stories she had been telling were to her
her the greatest in the world taken straight from the pages of the new testament that her own adventures
might be worth setting down she had simply not considered so for gladys it was the stories that she told
every night to those mule travelers to those children in her care to those townspeople as she was a foot
binding inspector those were the stories that mattered everything else paled in comparison it was the legacy of jesus that she was in awe of not in awe of her own legacy
she had no need to build a monument to her own pride and ego it's not false modesty too which can be a temptation
her adventures seemed entirely remarkable in the shadow of the one in whose name she was doing these things
and so in that way i think gladys arwood models for us christ-shaped humility christ-shaped humility
it's not a white knuckling approach of getting through things it was a reliance on the lord
a humility came from and demonstrated her daily dependence on her lord
jesus captivated her not herself she didn't fill her own imagination
her own life didn't fill her mind the lord jesus did and so i pray that she would be someone who
encourages you on your journey with this same lord who's able to answer the same prayers in remarkable ways
that the one you serve is worthy of all honor and so in serving him we are completely free
to have christ-shaped humility the world and its opinion of us and the desire to be remembered doesn't
have to have a hold of us christ sets us free from that thank you
so